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The best Programming books?
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The best Programming books?
#1
Hi all. I'm looking for the best books out there on the subject of programming. I'm looking for those rare books that are pure greatness. The book that every programmer should've read. There may only be 1 or 2 such books for the subject of programming. For instance, when it comes to self help books, the only one you'll ever need was written in the 1930's, called "Think and Grow Rich". Any other self help book worth its salt will be based on this book, even if the author never mentions it.

The one for the stock market and investing in general, is called "Where are all the customer's Yachts". That one was written in 1940. Taught me all I'll ever need to know, and Warren Buffet said that the book is what is responsible for getting him into investing. Its excellent, and quite funny. I'm looking for the book on programming. The one everyone knows and loves. Generally these types of books are written so that someone fairly new to the subject would be able to follow along and understand.

So which books would you recommend? There have to be some great ones out there for computing and programming.
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#2
What is the definition of "best book"? Easiest to read? Or covering "all bases"?

There is The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth. This book has heavily influenced Guido van Rossum and Python.

Quote:If you think you're a really good programmer... read [Knuth's] Art of Computer Programming... You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing.

—Bill Gates


Another classic is Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. Good news is that it's available free on MIT website.

Quote:Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a textbook aiming to teach the principles of computer programming, such as abstraction in programming, metalinguistic abstraction, recursion, interpreters, and modular programming. It is widely considered a classic text in computer science,[1] and is colloquially known as the wizard book, due to the wizard on the jacket.

—wikipedia
I'm not 'in'-sane. Indeed, I am so far 'out' of sane that you appear a tiny blip on the distant coast of sanity. Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy

Da Bishop: There's a dead bishop on the landing. I don't know who keeps bringing them in here. ....but society is to blame.
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#3
I'm also hoping to find them in audiobook format. That way I can listen to them in the car when I drive.

This article is a great demonstration of what I'm talking about. Maybe you guys just have some articles that you'd recommend people read. But you can see how its just going over a basic fundamental, and not really getting into anything real technical. It talks about how you never just throw the old code out and start from scratch. How doing so has killed companies before. You'd always at least keep updating and running your old code, until you had that new shiny thing finished. And maybe you just never develop that new shiny thing, maybe you just always keep making changes to your old code.

I had no idea about anything like that, cause I'm a complete newb. I didn't know what they did. For all I knew tossing out the old code and starting over completely was a common practice. I've only been learning programing for several months. So I love finding things like that to read (or listen to) that offer real insights to people like me.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/0...do-part-i/
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#4
I just refer to this good piece of reading: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years.

Quote:So go ahead and buy that Java/Ruby/Javascript/PHP book; you'll probably get some use out of it. But you won't change your life, or your real overall expertise as a programmer in 24 hours or 21 days. How about working hard to continually improve over 24 months? Well, now you're starting to get somewhere...
I'm not 'in'-sane. Indeed, I am so far 'out' of sane that you appear a tiny blip on the distant coast of sanity. Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy

Da Bishop: There's a dead bishop on the landing. I don't know who keeps bringing them in here. ....but society is to blame.
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#5
I'd suggest the first edition of the unix manual by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie in 1971.
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#6
(Jan-08-2019, 07:39 AM)bennylava Wrote: But you can see how its just going over a basic fundamental, and not really getting into anything real technical.

Nothing wrong with this approach but my opinion is that there is no programming without technicality. Computers are as dumb as football (ball, not the game). They do as you tell them to do. They don't hesitate to destroy whole world if you order so Smile . With great powers comes great responsibility, one comma can make big difference: "execute, not pardon" or "execute not, pardon"
I'm not 'in'-sane. Indeed, I am so far 'out' of sane that you appear a tiny blip on the distant coast of sanity. Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy

Da Bishop: There's a dead bishop on the landing. I don't know who keeps bringing them in here. ....but society is to blame.
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#7
I have a book (Dennis Ritchie) sold originally at company book store (Bell labs Holmdel, NJ) for $5, which is where I bought this (maybe the only copy, as it was produced on a line printer and looked to be bound on site, with a paper cover). It was an introduction to what was soon to become the 'C' language, can't even remember the title.

Now, I'm going to have to go Data Mining (literally), the book is in one of perhaps 200 plastic totes in a storage bin (I have trouble throwing away old technical stuff, and my wife won't have it at home, some of this stuff goes back to late sixties).
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#8
(Jan-08-2019, 07:48 AM)perfringo Wrote: I just refer to this good piece of reading: Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years.

So go ahead and buy that Java/Ruby/Javascript/PHP book; you'll probably get some use out of it. But you won't change your life, or your real overall expertise as a programmer in 24 hours or 21 days. How about working hard to continually improve over 24 months? Well, now you're starting to get somewhere...
[/quote]

I'm not really looking to learn to be a programmer super fast. I don't think that can be done. Don't want a crash course. I'm just looking to absorb knowledge so that on the job, I don't appear to be such a newb when it comes to good practices and techniques, as well as things you definitely want to avoid. I figure there must be more good articles out there like the one I linked, and maybe whole books like that.
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#9
I've been at it for 50 years. I can tell you this as a fact.

Everything in the software world changes. After 50 years, I learn at a rate that is much faster than it was back in the 60's and 70's, (but unfortunately don't retain for as long as I used to) but the point is, you never stop learning, and to me at least, that's one of the beautiful things about software engineering.

I am hoping to still be doing this in 20 years, although I expect not at the same pace. I remember saying the same thing 20 years ago, and that seems like yesterday. I am excited for the future, and love seeing new technology.

I find great pleasure in reading about almost any science, and a novel or two in between, and I don't restrict myself to new books, I enjoy going back and reading books I missed when they were in print. My advice is that if it's something that interests you, even if it has no practical value, you should read it.
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#10
If you want reading about programming which is not 'technical' you can have look on those titles:

Code Simplicity by Max Kanat-Alexander

Think Like A Programmer by By V. Spraul

And total non-technical but still (social)-'engineering' book:

The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers by Kevin Mitnick and William L. Simon

"Kevin Mitnick, the world's most celebrated hacker, now devotes his life to helping businesses and governments combat data thieves, cybervandals, and other malicious computer intruders. In his bestselling The Art of Deception, Mitnick presented fictionalized case studies that illustrated how savvy computer crackers use "social engineering" to compromise even the most technically secure computer systems. Now, in his new book, Mitnick goes one step further, offering hair-raising stories of real-life computer break-ins-and showing how the victims could have prevented them. Mitnick's reputation within the hacker community gave him unique credibility with the perpetrators of these crimes, who freely shared their stories with him-and whose exploits Mitnick now reveals in detail for the first time."
I'm not 'in'-sane. Indeed, I am so far 'out' of sane that you appear a tiny blip on the distant coast of sanity. Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy

Da Bishop: There's a dead bishop on the landing. I don't know who keeps bringing them in here. ....but society is to blame.
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